Tag Archives: stocks

As my portfolio increases, I’ve stopped paying enough attention to how it’s actually performing. My current taxable portfolio ($267.5k) is detailed below. I have about the same amount in my retirement portfolio, which I’ll cover in another post.

Note, a few stocks are listed twice because I’ve purchased them in two different accounts. My taxable stock accounts include FolioFirst (formerly Loyal3), Robinhood, Sharebuilder and Vanguard. Continue reading →

I’ve been failing at creating a spreadsheet that accurately tracks my portfolio performance and compares this to the same investment in the stock market. I’m going to try this a slightly different way… via, not a spreadsheet (which should make it easy but doesn’t) and instead, in the form of a blog post. Let’s see if this works… Continue reading →

My investment portfolio is a hot mess. Now that it’s at $500k, I am taking the appropriate steps to better understand my investments and their success (or lack thereof) compared to investing ALL of my money into general index funds over the last 10 years. Continue reading →

Using my handy dandy Google Spreadsheet account and Google Finance’s awesome tools that make it easy to see all of the stupid investment mistakes you’ve made, I’ve compiled a list of all my stock sells from my Sharebuilder account and compared them to the price they’d be worth today. I sold off AAPL because I was way overweight AAPL *AND* needed to buy a car (figured paying $17,000 cash was better than a loan) but here you can see that actually wasn’t the case. My worse sells according to this chart would be AAPL, INTC and XLF. Other than taking money out for my car on the AAPL transaction I did reinvest all of the proceeds from any sale here, so I need to somehow figure out how much the money made/lost in comparison to see if any of these sales were a smart move. The AAPL one kills me though. I should have just taken out a damn loan. Oh well, you live, you learn, right? (goes to cry in the corner.) (*ps I didn’t sell CBOU that was something that happened automatically as they went private or something.)

While I’ve been invested haphazardly since 2007, I still am pretty clueless when it comes to smart investment choices. OK, so the only real smart investment choices, one can argue, is diversification and low-fee ETFs (shout out @Vanguard.) However, my little investing hobby has led me to put my money into some – somewhat – riskier individual stocks and non-standard ETFs. And to be honest I have no idea how they are performing because my investment brokerage (Sharebuilder) only shows me the total % increase on my account (not annual) and doesn’t take into account any losses or gains from sales. So I’m at a loss for what is going on.

Thus, as a project of unemployment, I’m trying to dig through all my investing records and put together a clean google spreadsheet where I can at least see what the hell happened each year. Sharebuilder lets you see all your past history but doesn’t make it easy before 2012. It’s a PITA before 2012 as you have to manually go back to each month and can’t skip over the years, both for starting month and end month. I wish they made this feature easier to use! Continue reading →

I’m no data maven, nor am I a psychic, so my investment decisions are largely based on what the limited research I can gather tells me to do. That pretty much leads to a relatively boring portfolio, but I lost chunks of my “early 20s” portfolio thanks to buying small cap cleantech stocks inspired by my reporting days as soon as I bid adieu to the journalism field altogether.

But investing in these small cap stocks taught me a valuable lesson — just because a business seems like it has a good model and plan, that business may very well not be appreciated by the stock market (and usually for good reason.) Meanwhile, yawn-inducing stocks (like MCD and KO) are much more likely to have longer-term growth. Even more importantly, investing in index funds tends to be a lot cheaper when you don’t have a ton of cash to move around on a whim. At smaller investment sums trading fees can take a huge bite out of any potential long-term profit. Continue reading →

Exciting to see my investing portfolio growing. Of course this is all paper money right now, but I’m starting to get a handle on where everything is invested. Below, I’ve sorted my accounts into taxable IRAs & 401ks (blues), Roth IRAs (greens), and taxable accounts (reds). What’s most exciting is that by next month, as long as the stock market cooperates, my investment portfolio should reach $250,000 (I’m only about $500 short now.)

SELL AAPL — 25 shares @ $505.91 per share ($12640.80)Based on recommendation from a reader, I decided to further diversify my portfolio. While I believe in the long-term growth of Apple, it doesn’t hurt to make it’s position in my portfolio smaller compared to other more stable dividend stocks. I still have about 25 shares, down from my all-time high of 100. Of course, a few days later the stock is up to $525. Oh well, less capital gains tax for me to pay.

Diversifying my former APPL funds into other dividend-paying stocks. I already own most of these, though two are really new purchases. FTR has been driving me nuts as a spinoff of Verizon from a year or two ago, sitting in my portfolio with a percent of a share. It didn’t make sense to sell it for $8 since I’d be selling it for more than it’s worth, so I decided to buy $500 worth and see how it goes. It pays good dividends and seems rather flat in terms of growth. Worst case I sell it this year for a loss and it offsets my AAPL gains. IBM is another new one, which seems like a good buy. It’s another strong tech stock. I didn’t want to go all tech, so I’m entering slow on IBM. I have an auto investment set up for next tuesday for the remaining $6000 left from the AAPL sell, with the same stocks above, though I might tweak.

IRAs & 401ks

Rolled over my old John Hancock 401k to Vanguard and right now that $25k is floating in space somewhere. I did a direct transfer but given all the tax law with 401ks I’m worried it will get lost somehow. They say it takes 2-3 weeks to show up so I’m hoping it does! I’ll write a post about the funds I put the 401k money into when it does show up.

Of my 200k portfolio, 90% of it is in stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, and a few REITs and precious metal ETFs. While I’m diversified across industries, having that much of my networth wrapped up in the stock market is potentially a bad idea. If you were me, would you reallocate, and if so, what would you invest in?

Should I keep all my money in stocks because I’m still young and the market will have time to recover even if it fails again?

Should I buy a condo for $500k and put $100k down, therefore having 50% of my networth in real estate and 50% in stocks?

Should I apply to graduate school and pay for it outright, in effect investing in myself?

Posts navigation

Stay in Touch

About Me

The anti-minimalist: I'm the absolute worst with money. I have a shopping addiction. That's exactly why this blog exists. HECC is not a typical personal finance blog. I started it in 2007 to hold myself accountable for binge spending, a dropping networth, and lack of overall fiscal literacy. 10 years later, had achieved a networth of over $500k. Now my goal is to hit $1M by 40. Recently married and with my first kid on the way, things are about to get... interesting. I write about the intersection of mental health and money, spending & investing, and millennial personal finance.